Daily Life of the Aztecs Read online

  In the beginning, the Mexicans can have had no difficulty

  -28-

  at all with drinking-water: the springs on the central island were amply sufficient. As we have seen, they still answered part of the city's needs in the sixteenth century. The water of the lake itself, however, was useless, being too brackish; and when the unfortunate defenders of the city were reduced to trying it, it only made their sufferings worse. 62

  As the population increased, the springs were no longer enough. The only solution was to bring in water from the springs that flowed on the mainland. The Aztecs were well acquainted with the spring of Chapultepec, to the west of Tenochtitlan: it was a place of unfortunate memory for them, for it was there, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when they were still a nomadic tribe, that they met with the most appalling defeat in their history, and had their chief Uitziliuitl the elder taken together with his two daughters, to die in slavery at Colhuacán. 63 But under Motecuhzoma I, Chapultepec ('the hill of the grasshopper') had become a dependency of the capital, together with its wood of famous trees and its rocks, with a copious spring rising at their feet.

  Perhaps for some time the Mexicans were satisfied with carrying over pots of this water by boat, but very soon this must have appeared quite inadequate and the idea of the aqueduct must have arisen. The aqueduct was built under Motecuhzoma I, and it ran from the spring to the very middle of the city, in the enclosure of the great teocalli, a distance of rather more than three miles. It was made of stone and mortar, and, as all the accounts agree, it had two channels, each the width of a man's body. Only one was used at a time, so that when, after a given period, it had to be cleaned, the water could be turned into the other.

  It is clear that the aqueduct had to pass over several canals, because of the way in which the city was laid out. Cortés, describing this, seems to have been particularly struck by the ingenious construction of the hollow bridges, 'as big as an ox', which spanned the water-ways. Practised water-drawers balanced themselves upon these waterbearing bridges, and for a fee, they poured drinking-water into the jars that the boatmen below held up to them. The

  -29-

  boatmen then rowed off to sell the water throughout the city. There were also public fountains; or at least there was one principal fountain in the middle of the city: women went there, to fill their pitchers. 64

  As the number of people still increased, so, in its turn, the aqueduct of Chapultepec became inadequate. The construction of the second, which was begun and finished under Auitzotl, shows both the amount of the town's expansion and the intelligent activity of its rulers. This aqueduct, which brought the water from Coyoacán, ran alongside the Iztapalapan causeway.

  The carrying-out of this work had been preceded by a most unfortunate venture which shows the delicacy of the natural balance between the lake and the islands. The events made so strong an impression upon people's minds at the time, that the account, as we now have it, is heavily charged with magic. In fact, Auitzotl proposed taking the water of a spring named Acuecuexatl, which welled up in the territory of Coyoacán, between that city and Uitzilopochco.

  According to Tezozomoc, Auitzotl sent messengers to seek the lord of Coyoacán; he was a well-known wizard, and before their horrified eyes he changed himself into an eagle, a tiger, a snake and a whirlwind of fire. The messengers, however, managed to slip a rope about his neck, and so throttled him. The work was begun at once, and presently the aqueduct was ready to carry the water right into the middle of the town.

  A great feast celebrated the finishing of the work: one of the high-priests drank the water of the spring on his knees, while his acolytes sounded their instruments and the 'singers of Tlaloc' sang hymns to the beat of a wooden gong, in honour of the water-gods. 'Let thy water be welcomed in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, lying among the reeds of the lake,' they sang; and farther off, human sacrifices were offered up. Finally, the emperor himself, crowned with gold, welcomed the coming of the water to Tenochtitlan, offering it birds, flowers and incense. 'Oh Chalchiuhtlicue ("wearer of a green stone skirt" -- watergoddess)' he cried, 'welcome to the home of Uitzilopochtli!'

  -30-

  But the Acuecuexatl began to seethe, and the water rushed out with a continually increasing violence. The aqueduct overflowed, and by the end of forty days the situation was grave; the lake was continually rising. The fishermen gave the alarm, and then the flood began, destroying houses and even menacing the emperor, who was obliged to take refuge in the great temple. On the shore and the islands, the fields of maize were ravaged, and there was the prospect of famine: many people were drowned, and others began to leave the city.

  Both Tezozomoc, a Mexican chronicler with a strong tendency to exalt his own people and their former rulers, and Ixtlilxochitl, whose history is obviously biased in favour of Texcoco, record that Auitzotl, brought to this pass and fearing that the discontented Mexicans would rebel, went to ask the help of his ally, Nezaualpilli, king of Texcoco. Nezaualpilli said, 'You would never have had this misfortune, if you had followed the advice of the lord of Coyoacán in the first place, instead of having him killed.'

  He then took command of the technical and magical operations: several high officials were sacrificed and their hearts thrown into the spring, together with gems, gold and embroideries; then fifteen divers went down and succeeded in blocking the holes by which the water came out with such violence. Following this a kind of cement casing was built over the dangerous pool, to shut it in for ever.

  The flood cost the emperor and the city a great deal: there were uncountable houses to be rebuilt, and among them Auitzotl's palace itself; 10 loads of quachtli a small fortune, to each of the divers; 200,000 loads of maize distributed to the hungry populace; 32,000 boats provided for the people so that they could carry away whatever could be saved from the water, until it should go down again; and lastly the distribution of a great many clothes to the distressed. Ixtlilxochitl even claims that it was the cause of the emperor's death, for 'being in a room on the ground floor, which opened on to the gardens, and the water rushing in with such force, he was obliged to flee; and he

  -31-

  hit his head so hard on the jamb of the door that he wounded himself badly, and in the end he died of it.' 65

  This was certainly the best-known of the floods in the days before the coming of the Spaniards; but it was certainly not the only one. The city ran the risk of another every rainy season; for whenever the rivers that flowed into the lake of Texcoco were in flood, particularly the Acolman, the water surged into the lagoons that surrounded Mexico. It was against this danger that Motecuhzoma I built a dyke ten miles long in 1449, according to the plan and the advice of Nezaualcoyotl, king of Texcoco; it ran north and south from Atzacoalco to Iztapalapan, and it protected Tenochtitlan from the overflowing of the great lake. Considerable remains of it can still be seen.

  It may therefore be said that the Mexicans solved the first of their two great problems, that of drinking water; but that the solution of the second, the danger of flooding, was precarious and incomplete: indeed, even now it is still not entirely done away with, in spite of modern machinery.

  There is another question that should be looked at for a moment -- the question of urban sanitation. Tenochtitlan no more had main-drainage than the Rome of the Caesars or the Paris of Louis XIV, so the foul waters flowed into the canals and the lake; fortunately the lake had enough in the way of currents to ensure a certain degree of outflow. In certain places, 'on every road' says Bernal Diaz, there were public latrines with reed walls against the public gaze: no doubt the boats mentioned by the same conquistador in his account of the market came from here. In passing, it may be observed that the Aztecs understood the manuring of the ground with night-soil.

  Garbage was dumped at the edge of the town, in the marshy waste-lands, or buried in the inner courtyards. The upkeep of the streets was the responsibility of the local authorities in each quarter, under the general supervision of the Uey Cal
pixqui, an imperial official who issued directions, in the manner of a prefect. Every day a thousand men were employed in the cleaning of the public thoroughfares, which they swept and washed with such care that

  -32-

  according to one witness you could walk about without fearing for your feet any more than you would for your hands. 66 It is quite certain that at the beginning of the sixteenth century the city appears to have been healthy, because of the abundance of water, the cleanly habits of the people, and the mountain air. There is no mention of a single epidemic in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, which nevertheless carefully sets down all remarkable happenings and calamities, very heavy rains, earthquakes, comets and eclipses of the sun: the same applies to the Codex of 1576 and the Codex Azcatitlan. The first great epidemic ever known in Mexico was when a Negro from Cuba, who came with the Spaniards, brought the smallpox: it devastated the country, and carried off the emperor Cuitlahuac.

  TENOCHTITLAN AS A YOUNG CAPITAL

  Modern observers differ widely in their interpretation of the scene that has just been described. What in fact was Tenochtitlan? A very big Indian village, a swollen pueblo? Or an Alexandria of the western world? 'Although socially and governmentally Tenochtitlan was distinctly an American Indian tribal town, outwardly it appeared the capital city of an empire,' says Vaillant. 67 Oswald Spengler, on the other hand, classes Tenochtitlan among the 'world cities', the symbols and the materialisation of a culture whose greatness and whose decadence is summed up in them. 68

  I must admit that I do not know what is meant by 'an American Indian tribal town'. If it means that Mexico was not really the capital of an empire, and that behind the brilliant setting there was nothing more than what might be found in any Arizona village, then it appears to me that it is refuted by the moat unquestionable facts. There is as much difference between Mexico and Taos or Zuñi as there is between the Rome of Julius Caesar and the Rome of the Tarquins: the adult must not be confused with the embryo.

  But neither can it be claimed that Tenochtitlan was one of those rich, sophisticated and ossified cities which are the elegant tombs in which their own civilisation stiffens as it dies. It was the young capital of a society in full development,

  -33-

  of a civilisation in full progression, and of an empire that was still in the making. The Aztecs had not reached their zenith; their rising star had scarcely passed the first degrees of its course. It must never be forgotten that the town was destroyed by the Spaniards before it had reached its two hundredth year, and that its true rise only began with Itzcoatl, less than a century before the invasion.

  It is true that in so short a time the evolution of men and institutions had been extraordinarily rapid; and this evolution had certainly been hastened by the vitality of a young nation with a rich cultural inheritance in its hands. But their vitality, far from diminishing, continued to increase and to give continual signs of its presence; the time of weariness and decline had not yet come. Nothing had even begun to weaken their upward impetus before the irruption of the Europeans stopped it dead.

  It is for this reason that the Mexico of 1519 has nothing of the look of a city that is finished, a dead soul in a dead stone shell. It is a living organism that has been animated these two hundred years by a raging lust for power. The empire is still growing towards the south-east; the social structure is in a flux of change; the form of government, less and less that of a tribe, is becoming more and more that of a state. There is no hint of old age in this picture. The Aztec world is only just reaching its maturity; and the capital, neither primitive nor decadent, is the true image of a people which, although it still keeps its tribal cohesion, is looking from the height of its domination forwards to new horizons.

  Let us look at this town again, and listen to it. There is nothing feverish in its unceasing, orderly activity; the crowd, with its brown faces and white clothes, flows continually along the silent façades of the houses, and from time to time one catches the scent of a garden through an open doorway; there is not much talking, and that little is in murmurs which scarcely rise above the quiet brushing sound of bare feet and sandals. If one looks up, there are the sharp lines of the pyramids against the brilliant sky, and farther on the two great volcanoes rear up their dark forests

  -34-

  and their eternal snow. Men pass by, trotting with their foreheads bowed against the band that supports their burden: there are women with baskets of poultry or vege-tables. Beside them the canoes glide past without a sound upon the canal. Suddenly the cry of 'The emperor' runs from mouth to mouth, and the imperial retinue comes into view; the crowd opens, and with lowered eyes the people throw flowers and their cloaks under the feet of the emperor as he comes, attended by dignitaries, in a glory of green feathers and golden jewels.

  Even at noon it is cool in the shadows of the walls, and at night it is positively cold. The streets are not lit at night: and the night, as everyone knows, is the time for the fierce, uncanny beings that loom at the crossroads, for Tezcatlipoca, who challenges the fighting-men, and for the baleful Ciuateteo, the she-monsters that haunt the shadows. But unlike our European towns of the same period the city does not suspend all life until the morning, for in Mexico the night is the most important time for visiting, and the red light of torches is to be seen in the doorways and reddening the darkness over the inner courtyards. It is at night that there are parties to celebrate the return of caravans, and at night the priests get up at regular intervals to celebrate their services. The darkness, already torn by the flames from the huge tripods loaded with resinous wood on the steps of the teocalli, reverberates with the sounds of flutes and voices from noble or commercial banquets, and the beating of the temple gongs.

  It is a vivid, complex life, the reflection of a many-faceted, much-stratified society with powerful currents running through it; and to understand it we must turn from the physical surroundings in which it was lived to the society itself.

  -35-

  CHAPTER TWO

  SOCIETY AND THE STATE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

  The ruling class. Dignitaries, warriors, officials, priests: the Mexican 'nobility'--The rising class of traders. The monopoly of foreign trade: origin of the honours allowed to the merchant guilds: the traders' place in the social system--The craftsmen-The common people. Rights and duties of the ordinary citizen: the possibilities open to him: the case of the landless peasant-The slaves: the misleading nature of the word: how a man became a slave: manumission--Wealth and poverty. Standards of living. Ownership and usufruct of land: personal estate: taxes and tribute: wealth and expenditure of the rulers: public service and private fortune: luxury, comfort and frugality-The sovereign, the great dignitaries, the council. Beginnings of the Mexican dynasty: election of the emperor: the prerogatives and functions of the Ciuacoatl: other great dignitaries and high officials: the Tlatocan, or supreme council.

  During its migration and after its arrival in the central valley the Mexican tribe retained a fairly simple and essentially equalitarian social structure. The Mexica, a people of soldier-peasants, sometimes stayed for several years in fertile places; 1 sometimes they fought to gain possession of arable land; and then, carrying their few belongings on their backs, they would begin their march again.

  Such a life did not call for any marked differentiation in social function, nor for the appearance of an organised authority. The head of each family was both a warrior and a farmer, and he joined with all the others in the palavers which made the important decisions; and as for the Aztecs' standard of living, it was the same for all. They were all equally poor.

  -36-

  The only germ of a ruling class that existed at this period was to be found in the priests of Uitzilopochtli, the godbearers, who joined some degree of military command and general authority to their priestly functions. But this rudimentary organisation was sufficient; and when the Mexicans, in an attempt to imitate their more developed neighbours and to raise themsel
ves to the rank of the cities, provided their nation with a king, the result was catastrophic. 2 At the time of the foundation of their city they had the same social and political organisation as that which they had known throughout their wanderings.

  How great a change there was between this and the beginning of the sixteenth century! The Mexican community had become differentiated, complex and stratified: the different sections had widely differing functions, and the authority of the ruling dignitaries was very great. The priesthood, high in honour and importance, no longer had its military and civil aspect. Trade now dealt with a great volume of valuable merchandise, and the influence of the traders was increasing. Wealth and luxury had made their appearance, and misery with them.

  The old simple lines of tribal organisation had been overlaid by those of a state, with its ability to administer and to conceive and execute a foreign policy; and at the head of this stood a single man, the tlatoani, the emperor, with his counsellors and his officials about him, a man so high and splendid that the common people might not look upon him.